Today’s post is a tribute to Edith Wharton on the 154th anniversary of her birth. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. She won the award in 1921 for The Age of Innocence.

I believe her 1911 novel, Edith Frome, was the first novel I read. It made quite an impression on me.

Ironically, Ms. Wharton’s mother forbade her to read a novel until she was married!

Ms. Wharton was born into the upper-class in New York City during the American Civil War, and her family moved to Europe to avoid the toll the war was taking on the United States. She was more suited to life in Europe and died in France in 1937.